A California man has been sentenced to 11 months in prison for making threatening calls to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, according to an announcement by the Justice Department on Wednesday.
David Carrier, a 44-year-old resident of Concord, admitted his guilt in December 2023 for two charges related to making threats against public officials.
According to a sentencing memorandum submitted this week, federal prosecutors only asked for a four-year probation sentence for Carrier, citing his fast admission of guilt and acknowledgement of his “lapse of judgment” in making the threats.
The judge handling his case eventually disagreed. During a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Judge William Alsup sentenced Carrier to 11 months in jail and three years probation and ordered him to seek mental and substance addiction treatment upon release.
Federal prosecutors say Carrier left a voicemail with Pelosi’s San Francisco office on January 21, 2021, the day after President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“You better resign, you piece of f—— s—,” Carrier said in his message to Pelosi’s office, according to the sentencing memorandum. “Because we are equipped with a rope and a bullet that bear your f—— name.” “We intend to apprehend you b——.”
According to prosecutors, an intern who initially received the message viewed it as a threat and submitted it to her superiors, who then forwarded the voicemail to law authorities for examination.
More than a year later, authorities claim he made threatening phone calls to Mayorkas. According to the sentencing memorandum, on June 30, 2022, he instructed an operator from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General to send the following message: “If [Mayorkas] does not close the border, someone will be shot.” “And there will be illegal immigrants.”
Later that day, he left a voicemail with the DHS general hotline stating, according to the sentencing memorandum, “Tell that f— Mayorkas to close the border before we citizens start killing those f— illegal immigrants, or we will come looking for him and feed him to the dogs.”
Police authorities viewed the phone message as a threat and referred it for examination, according to prosecutors.
“Every citizen has the right to participate in the public political conversation. Nonetheless, threatening our public servants violates the First Amendment and undermines our capacity to engage in peaceful and essential public discourse,” said U.S. Attorney Ismail Ramsey, who prosecuted the case. “This office will not tolerate behavior that crosses the line to criminal threats.”
